ARC

How should a red-blooded American editor react when the Canadian queen of the murder mystery throws herself in his lap? If you’re me (left) and the setting is New York’s Book Expo last June, you get over your shock fast enough to plant a big, sloppy kiss on novelist Louise Penny’s cheek (see mortifying evidence below). Book buyers did much the same thing on Sunday the 15th, when they elevated Penny’s ninth Inspector Gamache thriller — the cerebral and satisfying …